ISI wants to portray India as unstable: Yasin Bhatkal

Handlers from Pakistani spy agency ISI instructed Indian Mujahideen’s top operative Mohammad Ahmad Siddibappa, who is better known as Yasin Bhatkal, to maintain a high frequency of blasts to show India as an unstable country before the world, counter terror officials told HT.

“Yasin was under regular pressure to maintain frequency of terror blast in India. In fact, some of the times instructions came directly from ISI handlers, bypassing the regular channel of Riyaz Bhatkal, who fled India in early 2009 and is now based in Karachi, Pakistan,” said a counter terror official requesting anonymity.

Yasin was picked up from Pokhra in Nepal on August 29 along with another Indian Mujahideen (IM) operative Asadullah Akhtar alias Haddi and brought to India. Later, they were formally arrested by the Bihar police at Raxual border.

Both Yasin and Haddi are in the custody of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) as it is probing the larger conspiracy of IM’s top leaders to carry out bomb blasts in India.

Security sources say ISI told Indian Mujahideen operatives it didn’t want to escalate the tension with India with strike at the scale of the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, but blasts should be carried out at regular intervals. Another instruction was to prepare fidayeen or suicide bombers for carrying out targeted killings.

The NIA now has data running to 3000 pages detailing the internet communication between Yasin and his handlers in Pakistan.

“The email and chat contain the intricate details of deep-rooted conspiracy to wage war against India and plans of future attacks. Some of them are in coded language,” the NIA has told the special court while seeking further custody of Yasin and Haddi.